What I'd Expect From a Junior Developer

What you'll learn in this episode

• Some tasks that you might be assigned as a junior developer
• How management (ie technical lead, general manager) may assign tasks to you
• What is expected from your deliverables

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Topics

Introduction

• I’ve noticed a lot of new developers that are curious what their first days, weeks and tasks would be when they join a team
• I’m going to outline what I’d expect from a new hire and how their onboarding process would/should go.
  - Note this is very different from team to team but I figure an example is better than nothing
• The interview process is meant to give me an idea of what kind of tasks I could give you as a new developer
• This episode is meant as a follow-up to Succeding in Your First Week as a Junior Developer https://www.htmlallthethings.com/podcasts/succeeding-in-your-first-week-as-a-junior-developer 

Your first tasks

Junior front-end

• Gain familiarity with a codebase
  - Assign a very specific task within that codebase that requires you to get it running
  - Ex. refactor a specific file to componentize a card layout or a form
• Test UI layout skills
  - Given a wireframe and design create this page or components
• Test API consumption skills
  - Assign a task like add updated at time to each comment in a comment section
• Documentation
  - Update documentation based on any new findings

Junior Back-end

• Create APIs
  - Create APIs for a marketing dashboard that shows number of registered users
• Write test for APIs
• Setup API troubleshooting
  - Use something like Postman to hit APIs to test different responses
• Fix/deploy new cloud function
  - We use serverless when it make sense and knowing how to create a serverless function either through a framework (next.js) or cloud service (AWS, GCP) will be a key skill

First tasks for freelancers

• If you’re not starting a new developer job but are jumping right into freelancing you have a bit more on your plate
• You should be able to create a product for a customer
• That can be using no-code tools (Wix, Squarespace, Webflow) or a basic static website (HTML, CSS)
  - If you use something like HTML CSS or Wordpress you’d need to know how to deploy/host your content

Junior Developer Struggles

• Legacy codebases
• Too much information is thrown at them
• Complex build pipelines
• Complex dev setup (docker)
• Lack of documentation
• Boredom
• Lack of guidance/mentorship